“If I was a mystic/I’d say our lives/Were bound together/In this life and the next,” “Surfer’s Journal”

Canadian singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Leif Vollebekk is a philosophy student turned troubadour who marries Carl Jung’s I Ching musings and Wittgenstein’s love of language with      his own lyrical poetry on the aptly named Revelation, his third album on Secret City Records, a product of the introspection brought on by the lockdown. The 11 tracks, including a pair of orchestrated, cinematic set pieces, evoke the narrative skills of fellow countrymen Leonard Cohen and Gordon Lightfoot, the crystalline sound of The Eagles, anchored by the rich intimacy of Nick Drake. The completed work, organic, earthy and homemade, weaves themes of nature — water, astral constellations, mortality – into a meditation on living in an ever-changing present laced with existential doubt, the search for a higher power.

“You really get me,” laughs Leif. “I’ve been wondering what the album was all about. There are no edges… It’s really just everything all at once.”

Songs like “Moondog,” the first single, offer firm proof of this juxtaposition with its “meditation on love,” fateful meetings, family, and magic, with a lyrical nod to “tessellation” (a pattern of geographic shapes covering a surface). “Was that the wind howling through the trees/Or was that you/Calling to me?” “Southern Star,” boasting one-time Dylan (Time Out of Mind) collaborator Cindy Cashdollar on steel guitar, is also an ode to romance, as Vollebekk plays a chiming keyboard riff: “You took me a while to find/You know I still get shivers/When your voice rubs up on mine.” Leif confronts his own touring musician existence in “Peace of Mind”: “I wonder if I’m crazy to want this/Wandering from town to town/What if my purpose is deserting the circus/Honey, would you follow a clown?” “Mississippi” is a tribute to the Dylan song of the same name on Love and Theft. “That started out as a folk song I wrote in Colorado at Gregory Alan Isakov’s farm, and it developed into this power ballad.”

The sprawling “Surfer’s Journal” features the legendary Jim Keltner on drums and a swelling Budapest Scoring Orchestra soundtrack as it compares a tremulous ride on the waves as a metaphor to life itself which takes place in a single, evanescent moment but lasts an eternity. “The sea is my nation, my first country/And when it takes me I will surely die,” Leif sings, noting that water is the source of life, but can also take it away. Likewise, the epic sweep of “Sunset Boulevard Expedition” – also featuring Keltner and the orchestra — was written before Leif recorded it at Hollywood’s legendary Sunset Sound, but it captures the idea of bringing the universe’s chaos under control. “I pick out brand-new constellations,” sings Vollebekk. “The stars are out of whack/So I place them in alignment.” “Rock and Roll” is an orchestral ballad which serves as a paean to the genre, inspired by a dream of Jeff Buckley teaching him the song on guitar, with influences ranging from Little Richard and Led Zeppelin to his grandfather, who first turned him on to music through playing the violin.

Recorded at both Sunset Sound and Dreamland in Woodstock, New York (mixed by Tchad Blake and mastered by Greg Calbi), Revelation is both spiritual and down-to-earth, from the heavens above to the oceans below, a product of more than two years in isolation, picking up a partner and a family along the way, using the time to take up horticulture, tend to his garden, build furniture and ponder his long-term future. “It was like being able to retire in my 30s while I could still enjoy it,” Leif says.

Initially inspired by Jung’s “spiritual alchemy,” Vollebekk’s Revelation songwriting process was further influenced by a subsequent exploration into the history of alchemy, and the mystery of the divine that he learned was peppered throughout many important scientific discoveries.  “During the pandemic lockdown, I was drawn to books about science and psychology. I guess I was looking for something to ground me,” said Vollebekk. “But when I read Carl Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections, I was taken aback that he wrote so freely of having premonitions in his dreams and by his fascination with alchemy. When I read about Isaac Newton’s life, I discovered that this man of science secretly practiced alchemy in his own laboratory and looked for signs of the apocalypse.  The more I read, the more otherworldly all these great scientists were. Dmitri Mendeleev said his arrangement of the elements came to him in a dream. Is it really that different that Paul McCartney heard ‘Yesterday’ in a dream?”

Vollebekk – who self-produced and played piano, guitar, bass, Hammond organ, harmonica, accordion, and Moog synthesizer – compiled an impressive supporting cast to perform on the album.  Aside from Keltner and Cashdollar, his collaborators also included revered bassist Shahzad Ismaily, and artists Angie McMahon and Anaïs Mitchell on background vocals.  Leif explains the songs came alive after he laid down one-take live vocals, all of which remain on the final versions.

The Ottawa-born son of mixed Norwegian and French-Canadian descent studied philosophy at college, spending some time in Iceland, then moved to Montreal, where he now lives. Vollebekk’s debut album, Inland, came out in 2010, featuring songs he’d written while in Iceland, followed by North Americana (2013), Twin Solitude (2017) and New Ways (2019), the latter two on the Secret City label. Twin Solitude was a shortlisted finalist for the Polaris Music Prize in 2017 and nominated for the Juno Award for Adult Alternative Album of the Year. Over the years, he has built up a strong following in the North Country, as well as in major U.S. cities and internationally.

“Lord protect me from my nature/When my nature has been torn from me/Now I’ve met you I believe in angels/Tell me now baby do you believe in me” “Angel Child”

Revelation boasts handmade music played with real emotion by a real person with a point of view, a distinct voice. After two years of isolation, when he stopped to literally smell the roses he cultivated in his garden, Leif is ready to start touring again with his band, starting with some festivals in Canada this summer, then Europe in the fall and the U.S. this winter.

“I just write the songs, let them be and try not to think about them too much,” admitted Leif. “And then three years from now while on tour, I’ll realize what I meant. But I find trying to explain them dilutes their meaning. They’re usually made up of fragments from everywhere. If you do the work, inspiration will be revealed.”

On his latest album, Leif Vollebekk emerges from solitude with a musical alchemy which offers its own Revelation.